Operation Fireball (6 page)

“Then, let’s rack it up.”

He rose to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t get shook about Erikson. He wants that big bundle as bad as we do. It’s just that until fairly recently he hasn’t been spendin’ much time with guys sayin’ no to him like you an’ I do. He’s spoiled from all the ‘aye, aye, sirs’ he used to get in the Navy.”

I watched Slater leave.

I still had unanswered questions, but they didn’t seem as important now. I was beginning to get the feeling that the project was ready for launch.

• • •

The meeting the next day took less than ten minutes.

“Do you have the fifty thousand?” Erikson said to me after a preliminary hello.

“I’ll have it a week after the light turns green.”

Erikson glanced at Slater standing with his hands thrust nonchalantly into his pockets, then looked at me. “It just turned. We’ll meet here a week from today and split it up as expenses dictate.”

Split up Hazel’s $50,000? With two almost-strangers? I decided I’d cross that particular rope bridge when I came to it. “The cash will be here a week from today.”

“Then, we’re set,” Slater announced. He sounded exuberant. “We ought to have a drink on it. Call Room Service, Drake.”

“No drink,” Erikson said immediately. “And you and I”—he was looking at Slater—“will stay away from the Aztec until a week from today. The less we’re seen together, the better.”

I wondered if that meant he’d had a report about Slater and me meeting in the Aztec bar. From Slater’s expression, the “no drink” portion of Erikson’s statement didn’t sit well, but he didn’t say anything.

“You’ll be staying here?” Erikson asked. “In case I need to call you about anything?”

I hadn’t intended to, but there was really no reason why I shouldn’t. “I’ll be here.”

“You leave first,” Erikson said to Slater.

Slater looked unhappy again when he left the room. He wasn’t the type who responded well to orders. “I’ll expect to see the whole fifty thousand next week,” Erikson said. “In cash. No stories.”

“You just be ready to hold up your end when the time comes,” I told him. I didn’t want him thinking he was in charge.

He went out the hotel room door, unsmiling.

It struck me that during our conversations I’d never seen him smile.

• • •

I called Hazel from the phone in the lobby. I never like to use a telephone that goes through a switchboard. “You can take off for the southland like a big bird,” I told her.

“With ‘big’ the operative word, sir?”

“I told my partners the money would be ready in a week.”

“That’s easy,” she said in her deep voice. “I’ll get the conversion process started in the morning before I fly south. It shouldn’t take me more than two or three days down there if anything decent is available. The cash will be at the ranch when I get back there, and I’ll wire it to you.”

“Not wire it,” I said. “Bundle it up and send it registered mail. I don’t want to be standing with people looking over my shoulder while that kind of cash is counted over a counter.”

“I should have thought of that myself.” A short pause. “That takes care of tomorrow. I do have some free time tonight.”

I was tempted, but resisted. If Erikson was having me watched, I didn’t want to lead the watcher to Hazel. “Let’s save it for the land of the pomegranate trees.”

“Can I call you to let you know how things are going?”

“If you stay away from specifics.”

“I’ll be on the first plane in the morning. Bye, now.”

“Bye, now,” I echoed, and listened to the phone hum emptily at the other end of the line.

I went into the bar and had a drink.

I should have been feeling all pepped up now that the project was actually on wheels.

That’s the trouble with experience: it sharpens the apprehension while it dulls the enthusiasm.

HAZEL CALLED
me two nights later.

“I’m flying back tomorrow or the day after,” she announced. “Everything’s all set. I found a place on Margaret Street within whistling distance of the shrimp boat fleet. That’s the clientele at this time of the year. It’s a tourist shop later in the season. I insisted on a paint job inside before I signed the lease.”

“It sounds good.”

“You’ll like it,” she said confidently. “I’m having the air conditioning beefed up, too. You wouldn’t believe how hot it is down here.”

“You sound as if you’re planning to stay for fifty years. You should be able to stand a little heat for the length of time we’ll be there.”

“Heat like this I can’t stand for fifteen minutes without some relief. You won’t be able to, either. I feel like a sponge just standing in this phone booth.”

I let it go. “How many rooms?”

“Six. There were two permanents, clerks at nearby motels, but I rousted them.”

“Fine. Having the place painted will give you an excuse to keep it empty until we get there. After you come back to the ranch, how long will it take you to wind things up and get back to Key West?”

“A week. Maybe less. Does that fit the schedule?”

“It does. We’ll begin arriving the second week.”

“Will you be a stranger? Act like one, I mean?”

“Only in public.”

I could hear her snicker. “It sounds like a better deal all the time. Except”—she hesitated—“you really don’t have to stick your head in the lion’s mouth, you know. The living is good without the heroic exploit complex.”

“There’s no heroic exploit complex.”

“You could just—”

“We’ve been through that,” I cut her off.

“Yes, we have,” she sighed. “Well, shouldn’t you arrive in Key West first, since I won’t know the others?”

“I’m planning on it.”

“I’ve already given the orders for the redecoration of one room,” she said complacently.

“Painting, air conditioning, redecorating. You’re supposed to be leasing the place, remember?”

“I can’t stand having things cruddy. Even if I’m only here a month. I guess that’s all I have to say for now. Unless there’s a last-minute hitch in the morning, I’ll drive my rental car back to Miami and catch a plane to Vegas.”

“Good night, big stuff.”

“Good night. See you soonest.”

“Hey! I almost forgot. What’s the name of the place?”

“The Castaways,” she said. My silence must have echoed along 3,500 miles of telephone line. “You’re not superstitious about the name?”

“We could always change it.”

“Except that it has about two thousand dollars’ worth of neon out in front spelling it out. Does it really bother you?”

“If it does when I get there, I’ll shoot out the neon some dark night,” I promised. “Take care, now.”

The Castaways, I thought as I hung up the phone.

The place might be all that Hazel claimed for it, but the name itself gritted on my teeth like unwashed spinach.

So I had time to kill while I waited for the arrival of the registered package of money from Hazel.

I killed a lot of it at Curly’s. I half-expected to run into Slater there, but he didn’t show. Either he was staying out of sight voluntarily or Erikson was keeping him out of sight. It looked, in fact, as though Erikson was calling most of the shots for the pair.

Not that I minded. Even as little as I knew about Erikson, I had no reason to prefer Slater’s judgment to Erikson’s. I preferred my own to either, for that matter. Erikson’s seeming dominance of Slater, though, was so different from the Slater I remembered that it didn’t ring true. When I could manage another tête-à-tête with Slater, it was worth probing.

I returned to the Aztec from Curly’s one night about two thirty
A.M
. I let myself into my room with my key and turned on the light. Two steps inside the door I stopped short. A mounded-up heap of bedclothes shocked me into the realization that someone was in my bed.

I wasn’t wearing my gun. I took a quick step in the direction of the bureau under which it was taped. Then the bedclothes heaved to one side and Hazel sat up in the bed, yawning and stretching. “ ‘S about time you came home, horseman,” she complained drowsily. “Thought I’d had my little trip for nothing.”

I went over and sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t think of anything to say for a moment while confronted with this fresh evidence that people simply will not do what you expect them to do. Or what they should do. “Did you come to the hotel directly from the ranch?”

“Sure did. Soon’s I picked up the cash. Decided to fly down and s’prise you.”

“How’d you get into the room?”

She chuckled sleepily. “I found a young-looking assistant manager and laid a bill on him. Told him I was your best girl and wanted to s’prise you.”

He must have been young, I thought. I stared at Hazel in the off-center slip that was her only garment. A hotel old-timer would never have gone for her story, bill or no bill. A veteran would have suspected a private detective with a photographer in tow trying to get evidence in a divorce case.

What bothered me was that if there had been time enough for the sheriff’s report on the shooting affair at the ranch to reach certain interested parties, there could have been a tail waiting at the ranch to pick Hazel up upon her return from her trip south. If so, she had led the tail directly to the Aztec. That was bad, but to make things worse, her story to an impressionable young assistant manager called attention to both herself and me. If confronted with a badge, he wouldn’t need much persuasion to talk about us.

Even half-asleep, Hazel could see that my reaction wasn’t what she expected. “You’re not glad to see me,” she said in an injured tone.

“It’s a nice surprise, but—” I didn’t finish it. Nothing would come of her indiscretion, probably, so why spoil her pleasure? She should have stuck to the script and mailed me the cash, but I could hardly expect her to act like someone who hadn’t made a move in twenty years without considering every possible consequence. “Okay,” I conceded. “Move over and make room.”

She did so with alacrity. I shed clothing and joined her in the bed. “That’s more like it, horseman,” she breathed in my ear. “For a minute there you had me thinking you’d thrown a shoe.”

I tipped her onto her back and wrestled the slip up out of the way. She grunted inelegantly as I plunged the coupling pin into its slot. Her hands cradled my shoulders firmly as I set out to make it last as long as possible. She was a noisy partner. Even in three-quarter time, her breath came in hissing jets.

Her legs crept up and tightened around me. “Whooo-EEEE!” she gasped. Her excitement fed my own. I reached beneath her when the bugles sounded the charge, filled my hands, and pulled her tightly against me. She yipped encouragingly until like a boxer’s one-two punch the double explosion threw us sideways on the bed.

“Was it a good one?” she murmured after several silent moments.

“You know it was.”

A short time later we showered together in the bathroom’s ceramic-tile cubicle. My ribs were discolored from the pressure of her thighs, while she had sets of fingerprint impressions in her buttocks. We soaped and rinsed each other several times while clouds of steam billowed around the bathroom. In a previous incarnation we must have been whales together. A lot of our Florida good times were embedded in my memory in connection with shower rooms.

Back in the bedroom, Hazel padded naked to her handbag on the bureau and removed from it a wrapped- and-tied package that she handed to me. “It’s in fifties,” she said. “I was afraid anything smaller would be too bulky.”

I hefted the package on my palm. “Quite a stud fee,” I said. “Maybe I should get myself syndicated?”

“Why, you egotistical—!” She aimed a punch at me. I blocked it and slapped her firmly in her bare belly. She went “Whuff!!” and staggered to the bed and sat down.

I put the package into the top bureau drawer. “You should get back to the ranch in the morning and then get down to Key West as soon as you can,” I told her.

“See?” she pouted. “Already he wants to get rid of me.” I went to the phone and placed a six
A.M
. awakening call with the front desk. When I returned to Hazel, she was smiling. “Any impressions of life in California you’d like me to take to Florida with me?” she asked archly.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I produced a few fresh impressions for Hazel to take along on her trip.

“See you in a week, horseman,” was the last thing I remembered hearing her say before sleep moved in relentlessly.

TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE
Erikson and Slater were due to arrive in the morning, I called downstairs to the bell captain’s desk and had a card table sent up to my room. When it came, I set it up in the center of the room so that it would be the first thing visible to anyone entering the room.

Then I went to the bureau drawer and took out the wrapped package of Hazel’s money. I stripped off twine and paper, fanned the thousand fifty-dollar bills out in a crisp semicircle, and placed the fan on the card table so that the corner of each bill could be seen individually.

When their knock came at the door I let them in, Slater eyed the display greedily, Erikson impassively. The blond man extracted a bill from the center of the fan, held it up to the light and examined it, crackled it sharply several times, then returned it to the pile. “Afraid of counterfeit?” I asked Erikson.

“That’s right,” he said. “Counterfeit would have been a complication we couldn’t use on this job.”

“Pretty pictures,” Slater said approvingly. He was still eyeing the bills. “Pretty, pretty pictures. Well, I guess that’s the last hurdle.” He glanced at Erikson who nodded in confirmation. “Where we meetin’ in Key West, Drake?”

“At a bar called The Castaways. It’s on Margaret Street, near the docks. It has rooms on the second floor we’ll take over so we can stay out of sight.”

“We should travel to Key West separately,” Erikson said. Nobody disagreed. “So I suggest that the money be split in half. I’ll buy the components of the shortwave radio and other electronic gear we’ll need. I’ll buy it in different places and assemble it in Key West. I’ll also put up the deposit on the fishing cruiser as soon as I get there and check it out.” He looked at me. “You can finance Slater’s expenses to Key West.”

“One correction,” I countered. “We’ll all check out the cruiser when the time comes, and I’ll put up the deposit. That way you won’t need to burden yourself with half the cash.” Erikson started to say something, but I pitched my voice above his. “I told you before I want to make sure it’s not only my money that gets to Cuba.” I separated forty fifty-dollar bills from one end of the semicircle on the table and stacked them together. “Can you spend more than two thousand on the radio?”

Erikson was holding his temper with difficulty. “I’ll need sophisticated calibration and testing equipment,” he said after a moment in which he had plainly considered saying something else.

I added twenty more bills to the stack, then handed it to him. “Will that get you to Key West with the gear?”

He nodded again, but his lips were a thin line. He wasn’t used to having his decisions questioned. “I still think—”

“See you at The Castaways,” I interrupted him. I separated ten more bills from the half moon and handed them to Slater. “You, too. Never mind planning on hitchhiking to save the cash.”

“Never crossed my mind,” he protested. He thumbed the bills before placing them carefully in his wallet. “Damn near forgot how that size denomination feels. Well, we all set?”

Erikson spoke before I could. “Don’t get carried away,” he said to Slater. His tone was dry. “Keep thinking of the bill-size denomination you’ll be feeling in Havana.”

“No problem,” Slater said. “See you both in Key West.” He cocked an eyebrow. “When?”

“No later than a week from today,” I said. I intended to be there sooner than that myself.

“A week it is.” Slater started for the door. “Confusion to the enemy, boys.”

“Keep your nose clean!” Erikson called after him. It was delivered in a quarterdeck type of voice.

The door closed behind Slater with no further word from him. “There’s a problem?” I asked Erikson, who wouldn’t be leaving the room until Slater had a five-minute start.

“He drinks. Not when I’m around, though.”

“Plan on being around,” I invited him. “That kind of situation we don’t need.”

There was a moment’s silence while Erikson debated his next words. I felt I knew what was coming. “Granted that you’re taking a financial risk none of the rest of us are, Drake,” he began smoothly; “you’ll get your share along with the rest of us. Distrust will get us nowhere. The project needs a leader whose decisions should be unquestioned.”

“And you should be the leader?”

“Yes.” It was said without hesitation.

“I don’t see it that way,” I replied. “Slater and the fishing boat captain may be under your thumb, but I do my own thinking. You can lead in the areas where you’re qualified, like communications. Otherwise, don’t crowd me.”

He didn’t like it, but he didn’t have a ready answer to it. Now that I’d made my point, I didn’t want him any madder than necessary. “How about a drink to the success of the expedition?” I proposed.

For a second I thought he was going to refuse. Then he must have decided that it would look too ungracious. “A small one,” he said.

I went to the bureau and removed a three-quarters-filled bottle of bourbon from a drawer. Bent over the drawer, I could feel the impression of my holstered revolver against my rib cage. I’d put the holster on before I spread the $50,000 on the card table. I took two glasses from the plastic tray on the bureau top, splashed booze liberally into them, then carried them into the bathroom to add tap water.

Above the sound of the running water I heard a knock at the corridor door. Slater’s come back to try to talk me out of a little more cash, I thought. Then I realized that Slater would have double-checked to make sure that Erikson had left. I turned off the water and listened.

In the same second I heard the sound of the door opening I had a mental image of fifty-dollar bills spread out on the card table. I put down the glasses and moved quickly to the partly closed bathroom door behind which I was concealed. I peered out through the crack near the hinged side. A pillow was lying carelessly atop the card table, concealing the money. Score one for Erikson, I thought. “Yes?” he was saying at the outer door. I couldn’t see who was standing in the corridor.

“I’m lookin’ for Earl Drake,” a western voice drawled. “I’m Deppity Sheriff Ed Calkins of White Pine County.”

I reached across my chest and drew the Smith & Wesson.

“I’m Drake,” Erikson said. He opened the door wider. “Come in.”

Before I could react either to Erikson’s claiming to be me or the invitation to come inside, a lanky individual in a tightfitting business suit and carrying a dun-colored Stetson in his left hand moved into the room. “What can I do for you, Sheriff Calkins?” Erikson continued.

“Answer a few questions,” the deputy said. He had weather-beaten features and a capable look.

“Questions?” Erikson’s tone changed. “Is this an official visit? Should you be informing me of my legal rights?”

“I thought we could keep it friendlier’n that.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Erikson said. His tone was freezing.

Through the crack in the door, I could see Calkins sizing him up. Whatever the deputy had expected to find, it plainly hadn’t included the impressive-looking, six-foot-four-inch blond Viking confronting him. Calkins’ manner was wary and his tone conciliatory. “We had a little ruckus up our way a bit ago, Mr. Drake,” he said. “On the ranch of a woman named Hazel Andrews who lives north of Ely.” He waited, but Erikson said nothing. “Do you know Hazel Andrews?”

“I’ll reserve my answer to that until I know the purpose of your question.”

A touch of steel came back into the deputy’s voice. “It was the type of ruckus that don’t get into the papers much, but the kind the law can’t turn its back on. A bunch of snotty-nosed kids got way out of line and like to killed a man. Maybe they did—there’s still wranglin’ goin’ on about the autopsy—but the point is the kids collected a load of lead from someone who caught ‘em at the job. Maybe they had it comin', Mr. Drake, but we don’t hold with vigilantes in White Pine County.”

“The kids were killed, too?”

“No. This unknown party dealt ‘em a bullet apiece slick as you please. By the time we were called in on it, there was no one at the ranch but Mrs. Andrews. It was her stepfather who was killed, an’ she climbed my boss an’ turned him every way but loose. She can handle a gun but not like that. Besides, we got a description from the kids of the man who did the job.”

“And I fit the description?”

“Not by six inches an’ fifty pounds.”

“Then, why are you wasting my time?”

“Because I followed Mrs. Andrews from her ranch right straight to this hotel,” Calkins said doggedly. “She came in, but she didn’t register. I did some nosin’ around an’ I found out she talked an assistant manager into lettin’ her into your room here, Mr. Drake.”

“So it seems I’m not unacquainted with Hazel Andrews,” Erikson said. “But I don’t fit the description—”

“You might know who does.” Erikson was silent. “Mr. Drake, do you know a man five-ten, a hundred seventy pounds, ruddy complexion, who’s capable of goin’ up to Mrs. Andrews’ ranch an’ puttin’ on a turkey shoot like Bill Cody never saw in his Wild West days?”

“Why didn’t your boss tell you to ask Mrs. Andrews that question, Deputy Calkins?”

“Mrs. Andrews is the biggest taxpayer in the county, Mr. Drake, an’ my boss is plannin’ for reelection next year. He’s got to do what’s right, but he don’t figure he’s got to stick his neck in the wringer to do it.”

Erikson’s attitude turned crisp. “I’ll state categorically that I didn’t do the shooting in White Pine County. When was it, did you say?”

“A month ago. Lackin’ a day.”

Erikson looked at his calendar wristwatch. “Then, if I were to prove to you that a month ago lacking a day I wasn’t within two thousand miles of White Pine County, wouldn’t that conclude your conversation?”

“Unless maybe you might want to be helpful,” Calkins conceded.

“My topcoat is in the cloakroom in the lobby,” Erikson said. “I ran upstairs to take a long-distance call. Let’s go down and I’ll show you evidence that will take me out of the picture entirely.”

“You could still know—”

“I don’t. But let’s go downstairs. I want to relieve your mind of its last lingering doubt about me.”

Erikson shepherded Calkins through the doorway. The instant it closed behind them, I bolted into action. I reholstered the .38, dashed into the bedroom, grabbed my overnight bag from the closet, dumped the remainder of the $50,000 into it, threw in my clothes on top, and walked out the door carrying the bag with my coat slung over it.

I had the good luck to find a bellboy on the elevator. “Here,” I said, thrusting bag and coat at him. “Hold these at the bell captain’s desk for me. I’ll pick them up in half an hour.” I gave him two dollars.

He handed me a thin metal disc and I watched while he attached its counterpart to my bag. The boy got off in the lobby, carrying my things. I rode the cab down to the basement and walked back up the stairs. At the lobby level again, I walked directly into the bar and selected a stool that gave me a full view of both the lobby’s cloakroom entrance and the bell captain’s desk. There was an element of risk in leaving the money in the unlocked bag, but I wouldn’t be out of sight of the bag.

I sat and watched the cloakroom door. Erikson could have got rid of Calkins already, or they could still be inside. Erikson had gone up a couple of notches in my estimation. If I’d been him, I don’t know if I’d have had the wit to claim to be Drake. It had taken the sword right out of Calkins’ hands when the two descriptions failed to match. It irked me, though, that I had had to be rescued by Erikson, the amateur. And it had been a rescue. Without him, I might easily have had to shoot my way out of that hotel room.

Five minutes went by and I was beginning to think they had left already. Then Erikson and Calkins emerged together from the cloakroom. Calkins went directly to the front entrance and walked outside to the street. I was too far away to see his expression, but he could hardly have been happy with the result of his investigation.

Erikson came into the bar. Without breaking stride he continued on to the men’s room. I gave it two minutes and followed him. There was one other man inside. I washed my hands until he left. Then Erikson and I stood with Erikson halfway into one of the private toilets so he could step inside and close the door if anyone else happened to enter.

Now that I was rid of Calkins, I really had only one other thing on my mind. After having his nose rubbed in the subject of Hazel Andrews just now, and in circumstances that left neither Hazel nor me looking particularly bright, what was Erikson’s reaction going to be when he found Hazel behind the stick at The Castaways?

Erikson spoke first. “The deputy is satisfied that he’s run into a stone wall. He’s not as unhappy about it as you might expect. He let it slip that he felt the sheriff had given him a job to do that the sheriff had felt it politically inexpedient to take upon himself.” Erikson was studying me. “From the sound of things, you ought to get yourself a less conspicuous woman. Calkins spoke of her size, her looks, her money, and her temper. It was hard to tell which impressed him most.”

He said it almost jovially. I couldn’t understand it. Then it came to me. Just as it had been a relief to me to find that Erikson could handle himself capably in an emergency, he must be feeling the same way about me after learning from the deputy the details of what had taken place at the ranch. Before, he’d been taking me strictly on Slater’s word.

I ignored the remarks about Hazel. “Before you leave the hotel right now, Mr. Drake,” I said to Erikson, “I’d appreciate your stopping at the front desk and checking out.” I handed him two one-hundred-dollar bills from my thin reserve fund. I didn’t want him to think I had been dependent upon the $50,000 now that he might have a different idea about where it came from.

“In case someone has Calkins watching the desk, you mean?” I nodded. “I don’t believe he has, but it’s not a bad move. What about your things?”

“I cleaned out the room.”

“So where to now?”

“Key West.”

“There’s something you can do for me first if you will. One of the items we’re going to need on the cruiser is a combination scanner-transmitter to raise hob with the Cuban radar. There’s a place in San Francisco where components can be bought—some of this material is still classified—but I don’t want to appear there personally. I’ll write out for you what we need, and I’d appreciate it if you’d pick it up and bring it to Key West with you.”